As you may know, Alzheimer’s is a disorder involving two proteins — tau and amyloid. Tau gets misfolded into tangles in Alzheimer’s. These tau tangles are also part of PSP and CBD. There has been a push over the last few years — largely led by Adam Boxer, MD, at UCSF (well, that’s my view of things) — that Alzheimer’s drugs targeting tau are best studied in PSP. More precisely, they are best studied in the Richardson’s Syndrome form of PSP (PSP-RS).
There are several reasons for this. One is that atrophy occurs in the PSP-RS brain at a faster rate than in an AD brain. Another is that PSP is a disorder of tau only so it’s ideal to study a tau-busting drug in PSP. Another the diagnostic accuracy for PSP-RS is quite high. Also, it is easier to get a PSP drug trial approved by the FDA since PSP is considered a rare disorder.
The Alzheimer’s Association held at International Conference in mid-July in Denmark. Alzforum, a website for Alzheimer’s researchers, posted a write-up in mid-August of the tau-related research reported at the conference:
alzforum.org/news/conference-coverage/therapies-take-aim-tau
The write-up summarizes the research this way:
“Potential therapies included two active vaccines, an antibody, an inhibitor of the enzyme that removes sugar molecules from tau, and an anti-aggregating compound. Most scientists are planning, or have already started, tests in humans.”
Other than those sentences and a few other general sentences, the tau therapies write-up is pretty hard to understand. Of course I tried harder to understand when “PSP” was mentioned.
One research group plans for human studies in late 2015 in PSP with a compound that it hopes will disrupt the aggregation of tau.
Remember that there is currently a safety study going on at UCSF in both PSP and CBS with intravenous infusions of an experimental drug aimed at tau. There are four infusions over a nine week period. See:
clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02133846
Hopefully one of these efforts will pan out for PSP, CBD, and AD!
Robin